Miami Seahawks
 | |
| Founded | 1946 |
|---|---|
| Folded | 1947 |
| Based in | Miami, Florida |
| League | All-America Football Conference (1946) |
| Division | Eastern Division |
| Team history | Miami Seahawks (1946) |
| Team colors | Orange, White, Green[1] |
| Head coaches | Jack Meagher (games 1–6) Hamp Pool (games 7–14) |
| General managers | Jack Espey[2] |
| Owner(s) | Harvey Hester |
| AAFC Championship wins | 0 |
| Home field(s) | Burdine Stadium |
The Miami Seahawks were a professional American football team based in Miami, Florida. They played in the All-America Football Conference (AAFC) in the league's inaugural season, 1946, before the team was relocated to Baltimore. They are notable as the first major league sports franchise in Miami.
The Seahawks were coached initially by
Florida did not have another professional football team for 20 years, until the (fourth) American Football League (founded in 1960) added the Miami Dolphins in 1966, while the Seahawks name would be revived when the National Football League added the Seattle Seahawks in 1976 after a public vote of possible names. Neither of these teams are considered to be related to the Miami AAFC team.
History
The Miami Seahawks were the last of the AAFC's charter teams to be established: originally, there was a
A group of Miami football boosters, led by Harvey Hester, seized on the chance to bring a major league team to their city. The AAFC, needing an eighth team to avoid byes in the schedule, readily granted Hester a franchise:[4] the Seahawks thus became the first major league sports team to be based in Miami.[5] Home games were played at Burdine Stadium, later called the Miami Orange Bowl.[6]
The Seahawks stood out from the other AAFC franchises in several ways:
- Firstly, Miami was by far the smallest market in the AAFC, with roughly half the population of most other metropolitan areas with professional football teams: in fact, it was the second smallest city in the NFL and AAFC, ahead of only Green Bay (which at the time played part of its schedule in much larger Milwaukee).
- Secondly, although Miami was beginning a period of growth that continues today, it was only the 42nd-largest city in the United States at the time, while the other AAFC and NFL cities (except Green Bay) were among the fifteen largest in the United States.[7]
- Thirdly, whereas the AAFC otherwise stood out for being backed by wealthy businessmen, Hester was substantially less wealthy than the other team owners, and was the only one among them who was not a millionaire.[8] Cleveland Browns famed coach and owner Paul Brown remarked that Hester seemed out of his element around the other owners, to the point that he was reluctant to even play poker with them.[9]
- Fourthly, with a capacity of about 35,000, Burdine Stadium was a relatively small stadium even by the standards of the time (it would be expanded to almost 60,000 shortly after the Seahawks' demise). At the time, teams needed to draw at least 25,000 fans per game to break even, thus Hester had little margin for error if his club was to remain solvent.
- Fifthly, the Deep South was culturally much less accepting of professionalism in sports at the time, compared to the more industrialized northeast where most U.S. professional sports teams were then based, further complicating the team's efforts to sell tickets.
- Finally, the endemic racism of the pre-civil rights era South further hampered the team's attempts to gain an audience after it became clear the AAFC would be an integrated league. In contrast, college football in the region was almost entirely segregated in this era.
The Seahawks hired
By the time of their first home game, they had a record of 0-3-0, leading local papers to describe them as "woefully inept".[7] Meagher resigned on October 22 after winning just one of his first six games, with assistant Hamp Pool, the captain of the 1940 and 1941 Chicago Bears NFL championship teams, being forced to take over as head coach.
After a 1-7-0 start, the team were in last place when they returned home to host their final six games. For the aforementioned reasons, the team would have had difficulty filling their stadium even in the best of circumstances, and in any case fans had quickly lost interest in the struggling team, and a paltry total of 49,151 fans [10] [11] paid to attend the Seahawks' home games: this included a miserable 2,340 against Brooklyn, the second lowest attendance at any professional football game since 1939 (excluding 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic severely limited attendance). [7] [12] Further, Cleveland and San Francisco had completed their 14-game regular seasons before the Seahawks hosted their final two home games.
The team also played all of its November home games on Monday nights, the first time in major professional football that such a move had ever been attempted more than once in a year.
At the end of the season, the team was $350,000 in debt, including $80,000 in outstanding travel and payroll expenses.[8] This was well beyond Hester's ability to pay, and to make matters worse, his boosters walked away upon realizing the extent of the debt. Other football boosters in Miami wanted to buy the team, but were unwilling to pay the substantial debt, so they wanted to wait another year to make a bid.[7]
Before the Miami boosters could make a bid, however, Hester was declared
The fiasco left local officials weary of upstart professional football leagues. By 1960, Miami was much more comparable in size to established major professional sports markets, nevertheless when the
After the NFL and AFL
1946 schedule
- Fri. Sept. 6 — Miami 0 at Cleveland Browns 44
- Sun. Sept. 15 — Miami 14 at San Francisco 49ers 21
- Fri. Sept. 20 — Miami 14 at Los Angeles Dons 30
- Tue. Oct. 8 — San Francisco 49ers 34 at Miami 7
- Fri. Oct. 11 — Miami 17 at Buffalo Bisons 14
- Fri. Oct. 18 — Miami 7 at Chicago Rockets 28
- Fri. Oct. 25 — Miami 7 at Brooklyn Dodgers 30
- Sun. Nov. 3 — Miami 21 at New York Yankees 24
- Mon. Nov. 11 — Chicago Rockets 20 at Miami 7
- Mon. Nov. 18 — Buffalo Bisons 14 at Miami 21
- Mon. Nov. 25 — Los Angeles Dons 34 at Miami 21
- Tue. Dec. 3 — Cleveland Browns 34 at Miami 0
- Mon. Dec. 9 — New York Yankees 31 at Miami 0
- Fri. Dec. 13 — Brooklyn Dodgers 20 at Miami 31
| Season | W | L | T | Finish | Playoff results |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Miami Seahawks | |||||
| 1946 | 3 | 11 | 0 | 4th AAFC East | N/A |
References
- ^ "Archived copy". Archived from the original on February 13, 2014. Retrieved October 17, 2013.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link) - ^ Whittlesey, Merrell (December 22, 1946). "'Golden Touch' Espey Meets With Ironic Failure in Miami". Evening Star. Retrieved May 16, 2023.
- ^ Coenen, p. 118.
- ^ Coenen, p. 113; 136.
- ^ Coenen, pp. 140–141.
- ^ Morgan, p. 22.
- ^ a b c d Coenen, p. 142.
- ^ a b c Coenen, p. 126.
- ^ Levy, p. 88.
- ^ Attendance 1946, Pro Football Reference
- ^ While various sources report an average of 14,000 fans attended the first two Seahawks home games and an average of 9,000 attended the last five, the Pro Football Reference numbers make it clear that 24,000 of these were admitted for free or at reduced prices.
- ^ An NFL game on Thanksgiving Day, 1952, between the Dallas Texans and the Chicago Bears, which had been moved to Akron, Ohio due to paltry ticket sales in Dallas, drew only 2,208 people.
- ^ Carroll, p. 82.
- ISBN 0-06-270174-6. Retrieved September 30, 2010.
- Coenen, Craig R. (2005). From Sandlots to the Super Bowl: the National Football League, 1920-1967. University of Tennessee Press. ISBN 1-57233-447-9. Retrieved September 30, 2010.
- Levy, Alan Howard (2003). Tackling Jim Crow: Racial Segregation in Professional Football. McFarland. ISBN 0-7864-1597-5. Retrieved September 30, 2010.
- Morgan, John (1997). Glory for Sale: Fans, Dollars, and the New NFL. Bancroft Press. ISBN 0-9631246-5-X. Retrieved September 30, 2010.